"For engineers looking to create the next generation of armour, the ocean is the place to look. Animals from snails to crabs protect themselves with hard shells whose microscopic structures imbue them with exceptional durability, surpassing even those of most man-made materials. They are extreme defences. The mantis shrimp smashes them apart with its fists. That’s the animal that David Kisailus from the University of California, Riverside is studying. “People have been studying molluscs for decades because they’re thought to be very impact-resistant,” he says. “The mantis shrimp eats these guys for dinner.” Mantis shrimps – neither mantises nor shrimps –are pugilistic relatives of crabs and lobsters. Kisailus says that they look like “heavily armoured caterpillars”. They kill other animals with a pair of hinged arms held under their heads. In the “spearer” species, the arms end in an impaling spike, while the “smashers” wield crushing clubs. The smashers deliver the fastest punch of any animal. As the club unfurls, its acceleration is 10,000 times greater than gravity. Moving through water, it reaches a top speed of 50 miles per hour. It creates a pressure wave that boils the water in front of it, creating flashes of light (shrimpoluminescene – no, really) and immensely destructive bubbles. The club reaches its target in just three thousandths of a second, and strikes with the force of a rifle bullet. Against such punches, even the best armour eventually fails. But the mantis shrimp’s club doesn’t fail. It can deliver blow after punishing blow, breaking apart its prey without breaking apart itself. Kisalius knows why. His team – including James Weaver, Garrett Milliron and Ali Miserez – have unveiled the club’s microscopic secrets."
- Eivind
from Bookmarklet

I've been talking about the "karate shrimp" (my sister-in-law's name for it) for days now. You can hear all about it's other extreme body mechanism, it's color vision on this episode of Radio Lab: http://www.radiolab.org/2012...
- Micah